Tippecanoe County Will Have To Wait To Test New Voting Equipment

This machine was ready to use -- it just didn't have all the files it needed.

Credit Stan Jastrzebski / WBAA News

A scheduled test of Tippecanoe County’s new voter check-in equipment had to be postponed Monday when the company that supplies ballots failed to deliver a computer file in time.

The file, which gives audio of each candidate’s name and party affiliation, is used by voting machines to assist visually-impaired voters.

That prevented a public run-through of new technology the county has purchased from Votec – technology County Clerk Christa Coffey says she’s expecting the first delivery of this week.

During a presentation in August, Votec officials appeared unsure whether they could deliver the 80 voter check-in packages the county needs in time for early voting.

Coffey says the county’s subsequent contract mandates delivery of those machines by October 3rd, so the county has a week-and-a-half to test and install them before the first in-person ballots are cast.

The county election board will meet on September 29th for a second attempt at testing the new setup.

Coffey says the voter database that Votec’s equipment will manage is already built, but it must still interface with several other systems.

That interaction has caused problems in each of the last two elections, including delays checking voters in for 2015’s mayoral elections and some West Lafayette voters receiving incorrect ballots.

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Tippecanoe County officials are hoping a new check-in system will make Election Day less stressful for both voters and volunteers.

The last several election cycles have been plagued with problems related to the county’s check-in system, from long waits for voters to stressful situations for volunteers. For example, the e-pollbooks have had difficulty connecting with the county’s voter database, and last November, an issue with the system distributed the wrong ballot to nearly 100 people during early voting.

Tippecanoe County officials are contacting some West Lafayette voters who cast their ballots early, after a computer error gave them the wrong ballot.

Tippecanoe County Clerk Christa Coffey says 94 voters in Wabash Township, which contains West Lafayette, received ballots containing the wrong city council race, thanks to a software error in the computer voting system the county employs. Coffey says the error was pinpointed Sunday after multiple people kept insisting their ballot was incorrect, even though the registration indicated they were in the right district.

At a Friday meeting to certify votes from last week’s municipal elections in Tippecanoe County, a Democratic candidate for West Lafayette City Council alleged widespread problems with the voting process.

Third District Democrat Joelle Jones, who lost a three-way race in her district, doesn’t dispute her outcome, but says she’s more concerned about the process.